October 26, 2015 by Michael

An Unfinished Act of God’s Love

Photo Thanks to Greg Rakozy

I finished James Loder’s The Logic of the Spirit: Human Development in Theological Perspective, a book I’ve owned since seminary, a book I’ve returned to a few times, a book I couldn’t read through until the last couple months, 10-11 years after buying it.

I’m not even ready to attempt a review. That’ll take me a few years, but he weaves and integrates physics, science, philosophy, cognitive and psychoanalytic theory, and theology into what is a strong presentation of how we are created as a product of the Creator Spirit, for creative purposes, which despite the losses, changes, and injuries in life, find ultimate repair in the face of God, the person of Jesus. Trust me: there is so much to the book. I’d loan it out but I don’t trust you’d return it to me, evidence, for sure, of my continued need to rebuild torn portions of my self in the face of God.

Nonetheless, I think this quote, his last words in the book, capture the broad, grand work Professor Loder accomplished in this fascinating work. It may not take you ten years to return and read through this material, but if you’re at all inclined for the disciplined reflection hinted at in the words below, be courageous:

In actuality, human development is never experienced as a cycle or a sequence; it often feels more like a few decades of searching, finding, and losing an uncertain fulfillment. But in each person the search is a longing for the eternal intimacy of a love that may be grasped only unclearly and proleptically, but nevertheless profoundly, in the face of a beloved caretaker. At three months of age, before the sense of abandonment begins to dawn upon consciousness, the prototype of the face, the configuration of a gracious presence, is set down. Even in the absence of the face, the longing appears and persists. This anticipation cannot be fulfilled in human terms; indeed, every human effort to solve the dilemma posed by the abyss underlying development only intensifies the difficulty. When the longing for that intimacy is satisfied by the Spiritual Presence of Christ, the Face of God, then the answers to our basic questions may dawn on us. A lifetime is an unfinished act of God’s love; it is intended that we complete that act by returning ourselves to God, directly and through others, in love. In this recognition, we discover that the fundamental data about us are not merely that we are alive and developing, incredible products of a vast expanding universe. Rather, as each life unfolds, gets torn open, stripped of its survival techniques and its passing pleasures, and discovers itself as spirit, then it appears from under the surface that we have been created for nothing less than the pure love of God, whose universe is our home.

Photo Thanks to Michal Kulesza

October 21, 2015 by Michael

Breathe Someone Into Life

On rare occasions, we may need to breathe someone into life who is incapacitated in a way that threatens his or her well-being. But most people can and must come to life in their own way and time, and if we try to help them by hastening the process, we end up doing harm.

(From A Hidden Wholeness, pg. 63)

Photo Thanks to Austin Schmid

Where must you come to life in your own way this week, and how can you be gentle with those places? How will you plan for breathing life into your own lungs as you work?

I think it’s really easy to carry on as if we aren’t breathing. Rushing through the morning. Pushing through until lunch or beyond that meeting just so we’re able to…

On the other hand, it’s easy to breathe. What’s hard is noticing your breath. I think the call to contemplation in real life is a simple call to notice what’s most easily unnoticed. Whether that’s the flicker of a person’s gaze in a conversation or your own hurried nature, pressing against a deep call to an alternative way of being.

Someone told me, in effect, that my calling her to a slower nature was unrealistic. She was saying that I didn’t understand. I did understand. I tried hard to hear her. In fact, I knew more about what she was saying than she did. And there was something in my counsel to her that she was resistant to. She couldn’t quite grasp the simple clarity that comes with breathing.

I was talking out of Palmer’s lexicon to some degree. We have to come to life in our own way. We can’t be rushed into newness. Like birth, gaining clarity and embracing insight is a grueling event. It’s a life and death competition.

Here’s a one-sentence prayer: Life-giver, enable me to brighten in the dismal parts of myself so that I can notice myself and, eventually, others.

October 19, 2015 by Michael

People Who Insist You Avoid Shortcuts

Photo Thanks to Leroy and Lifepix

Surround yourself with people who insist you avoid the shortcut.

When I read Seth Godin’s words in that recent post, it made me take a minute to express my gratitude for people who forbid me–with their lives, with their ways of being, with their manner–to take short cuts.

I had to write one of them. I did something similar last week on a facebook wall. I’ll do something like that in a month when I see a mentor for his birthday. I’ll do thanksgiving around my own birthday too.

I’m thankful that not only is Seth Godin great for quality, pointed writing wisdom, but he also helps me notice the people pulling it off. He helps me bring to mind people who are relentless in focusing their energies on building something good.

Because I work in ministry, my focus is usually on people who build other people. Those are my heroes, mentors, friends, and colleagues. I spend myself with those who contribute. I befriend them.

I befriend people who give. I’m a giver. I build givers. I’m a teacher. I collect teachers around me. Because those folks don’t take shortcuts. Because those folks don’t let me take shortcuts.

They take very long views. Dangerously long views. They believe in the worst of students. They slow down when someone needs attention. They breath deeply when everyone’s afraid.

Those are the folks who teach me to “take my time” and attend to what’s in front of me with grace. They are the people in my spiritual autobiography, in my life narrative, in my regularly changing life review when I’m on the MICU and being grateful for the number of witnesses who people and participate in this life that I live.

They’re the ones around the interior kitchen table of my heart. They’re the people I thought of when I read Seth’s brief reminder. I’m thanking them all as much as I can because they’re lovely.

October 15, 2015 by Michael

Return

I knew this before I spent time in hospitals or around kitchen tables with people sharing deep things. I knew in slices. And I keep learning that coming to self-awareness is a life-long journey.

I realize that people don’t usually think about and reflect upon themselves. That would probably be my point in thinking this over, writing this down. It is a requirement of good living to consider oneself. It should be normal but it feels like a privilege.

This consideration is generally an adult behavior, whenever adulthood begins. Of course, human development people speculate how much longer adolescence really is in comparison to the early college cutoff of previous understandings. We are children. Then we become something else, adolescents, and it takes a long time for that mixed period of smashing, surveying, simplifying, and rebuilding to occur.

When that finishes, we step into a period of becoming. A period of becoming different. A period of differently becoming. Part of becoming is developing a sense of self, which is my self-awareness. I don’t think we can be self-aware throughout childhood. We are certainly close to parts of our selves. We know things then that God would have to be very gracious for us to remember, but distance begins and distance lengthens, and we lose along the way a real sense of who we are.

We lose that abiding, plain, underground sense of whose we are. Our belongingness parts company with our self-understanding because that self-understanding is colored by the society (i.e., the social world of friends, peers, and competitors–all different people). We lose, and thankfully, that individualistic self-knowing.

Searching for a deeper, older, essentially communal self, we drift. And it takes a long time, a life time, to return (to) the core of our created-ness. That journey is filled with cracks in the ground under my feet. It is a personal but not private journey. Indeed, it is a very peopled journey. And eventually we get (to) who we are. We “find” ourselves. Eventually–and perhaps this is truly the hopeful theologian in me eking up–we arrive to our selves and find a rhythmic, balanced, engaging dance of divine community.

Who are you? Who am I? We hardly get those answers in college. We hardly “come to terms” with who we are when we get that first job or lose that first love or bury that parent buy that shiny toy. We don’t learn those things until we keep living. We have to keep living to learn. We have to keep living to keep learning. Which is exciting because there are things I learned as a boy that it might take you decades to learn. And there are things you picked up in a day that will take me years to get. And in that getting, in that process of living and learning, we are returning. Always returning. Always coming back to who we were.

October 13, 2015 by Michael

Counseling & Psychotherapy of Religious Clients

Photo Thanks to Aaron Burden

I decided to summarize a few books as a discipline for “keeping” some of the material I’m reading. I just finished Vicky Genia’s Counseling and Psychotherapy of Religious Clients. I will say that I love the kind of material in this book. I find great value personally and professionally in the work of counselors and therapists who are familiar with the beautiful country of a person’s soul. Genia’s book brought together her theory of how faith develops from a psychological perspective. I’m still thinking through specific applications for pastoral care and for spiritual care. There are a handful that I may put in a different post.

Genia is writing for counselors and spiritual caregivers. And her hope in writing the book is to offer a developmental approach to faith development. She is a psychologist, not a theologian. She would likely consider her specialty the therapeutic work she does with people who have religious convictions and whose religious values or the lack thereof impact their lives. But her book is on the psychological dimensions of faith formation.

For her, faith develops in a never-completed lifelong process with an end we can only approximate. Faith or religious development may not be smooth or linear, though it does progress—like childhood into adulthood—through distinct phases. She is writing from a primarily psychoanalytic point of view, though she critiques the Freudian version of it. Part of what her viewpoint means is that she centers her work on the role and value of parents, particularly, but not exclusively, the mother. If you read the book, you sense the parents pronounced role in nourishing what will largely be an unconscious (or perhaps less conscious) process of faith development.

The book opens with a brief review of the predominant theoretical responses to religion and spirituality. Genia notes the Freudian reaction to religion as an elongated adolescent desire to be protected and cared for by a (divine) parent. She also points to the derivative behaviorist and cognitive-behavioral findings of religion as related to the irrational thoughts which come from people’s backgrounds and upbringing, making religion a part of that background. While Genia quickly summarizes humanistic psychology’s view of religion as 1) among the many things people find important and 2) dealing with some of the same themes and concerns which cause people to seek therapy, she says that humanistic psychology doesn’t generally embrace religion. She paints a picture, which is a very historical one, that the major theories in psychology are unsympathetic to religion.

Genia is clear in her kind treatment of the import and role of religion and religious expression in healthy living. She admits to and thinks through her own religious experience in the book to some degree. She’s coming at the subject as a person of faith. After having identified “the spiritual enterprise” as complex and deeply personal, she says that “This book is largely a result of my own efforts to straddle the boundary between psychology and religion.” Another way of saying that, is that she is not searching to affirm the words of Freud. But she does discuss good qualities of a person’s upbringing and how those qualities relate to religious health. She discusses the contrary too.

When talking specifically about health, she says (p. 11-12), “Admittedly, some religious communities are healthier than others. In some cases emotional disturbance can be exacerbated by harsh or deranged religious indoctrination. Nevertheless, emotionally unstable people are often drawn to destructive religious communities where they can reenact their emotional traumas.” The distortions, strife, and abuse in a person’s background severely impact religious development and expression. They impact a person’s choice of a faith community which is the context of faith development for most people. Genia then enters into the primary content of the book which is to provide developmental stages of faith.

In Stage one (Egocentric Faith) she defines egocentrism as a normal experience where a child is developing the capacity to engage in stable relationships, learning to associate and deal with positive and negative affects within the parent/child relationship, and beginning to develop an integrated sense of self. Infants and young children judge the world through the parent-child dyad; will see parents as good and trustworthy in order to feel secure; and will deny a parent’s wrongdoing in order to manage overwhelming feelings of helplessness. Because children don’t distinguish wishes from actions, when children hate their parents (for abuse or mistreatment), children can develop dissociative or delusional disorders, coping by creating illusory worlds, on one hand, or can “cultivate an exaggerated sense of self-importance,” on the other hand. In either case, Genia says that all children who have suffered maintain an “entitlement to a responsive other.” She relates this to the religiously egocentric in her writing, saying that abused children will reenact traumatic relationships in their relationship to God. “People who relate to others and to God as need-satisfying objects do not do so out of deliberate selfishness or insensitivity, but because of severe deprivations and mistreatment in infancy and early childhood…The plight of egocentric adults should spark our deepest compassion and understanding” (p. 24).

In terms of guidance for those who work with people in this stage, empathic bonding is temporarily reparative. Genia says that such bonding taken too long may foster over-idealization and dependency and reinforce splitting. Because persons in this stage don’t trust and because they expect mistreatment—they themselves have experienced deep betrayal—they have “little in his or her psychological repertoire from which to conceptualize a benevolent or loving deity.” In a therapeutic relationship, Genia says that calm acceptance of a person communicates that feelings aren’t fundamentally bad and that encouraging the person to examine feelings is reparative.

The second stage is a hardened stage in my view. Dogmatic Faith is the stage where religious obligations are observed out of a strong, firm, and unwavering view that compliance earns love and acceptance. This stage could take root in authoritarian parenting or in a context of overprotective parenting. People in this stage may be compulsive, emotionally constricted, and secure in such things. Individuals in this stage are wary of revealing feelings about anger or sexuality. In effect, they hide. Their “excessive need for approval compels them to inhibit any feeling or behavior that they think will result in rejection or criticism” (p. 54). In terms of faith development, they uncritically accept the parent’s religious view and conceptions and then begin to project a sadistic superego (i.e., the self-critical conscience within) onto God while experiencing God as critical and impossible to please. Experience of the parent impacts the experience of God. Religious affiliation brings a sense of security, affirmation. Genia offers several subgroups or subtypes for this stage of faith. They include the legalist, the martyr, the crusader, the intellectual, the recluse. She gives good explanation for each type in the book.

Photo Thanks to Levi Price

The third stage is what she calls transitional faith, and it results from significant inner conflict as a person seeks an integrated philosophy of life and personal identity. It happens during adolescence, though, as with other stages, characteristics of the stage can be re-experienced by adults. As for faith development, like in adolescence, the person feels a thrust toward independence as well as a desire to maintain bonds and relationships with “people who matter.”

Faith matures in the “storms of doubt” and leads to critical reflection on previous stages and previously held values. In this stage, people try on different ideologies, choose different religions, and experiment with new practices and affiliations. They lose previous selves in a sense, are susceptible to depression. They “become disembedded from the world view that they previously took for granted, they may feel anxious and confused,” and Genia suggests support, assistance with grief, and encouragement for them on this spiritual path. Also, it aides these persons to read spiritual histories or biographies of leaders who’ve encountered transitions.

The fourth stage is reconstructed faith. A person comes from the transitional phase of development and meets the self-accusations of the superego. The psychic ideal (or spiritual whatever have you) is working against a shame-provoking voice. In this stage, persons push toward the positive ideals and resist temptations. They adhere to certain behaviors and religious codes because they feel right and resonant with new inner convictions. God is experienced as an ally, as supportive, as trusted. People in this stage commit to chosen ideals, rely on personal conscience as opposed to others from a peer group or a church. Faith reconstruction involves releasing what feels like outmoded beliefs in comparison to the newly shaped identity. Spiritual experience that helps the person hear the voice within prove meaningful in this stage. One concern of this stage is that people within it don’t tend to associate with people of different views. They may lose the ability to foster such relationships during this phase. They may not, then, grow in particular ways because of their disinclination.

Transcendent faith is the highest stage in Genia’s paradigm. An endpoint of maturation, there is a focus on both what we believe and how we believe. There is a “celebration of selfhood” in this stage as well as an accompanying celebration of the diversity of others with different philosophical and theological values. This final stage includes a pervasive acknowledgement that “By weakening the human spirit and sacralizing self-contempt, a sin-focused religiosity has devastating effects on the person’s psychological and spiritual development” (pg 114). Indeed, this is a theme throughout Genia’s book. The parental experiences which have framed the spiritually unhealthy people she writes about are negative experiences, and her treatment, while not focusing on the parent’s sins, does focus on the impact of them.

October 9, 2015 by Michael

Ready

Thanks to Jazmin Quaynor

I participated in a readiness consultation Friday before last, which in a sentence is a meeting with my clinical supervisor and a small circle who’ve read more than a hundred pages about me and my ministry for the purpose giving me feedback on my ministry as a pastoral educator, particularly as I start supervisory education. It was a consultation that was as much for my supervisor as it was for me. We attended and participated together.

I’ve been a pastor for nearly fifteen years, serving my current church for just over nine and my first church for five. I’ve taught in two seminaries, including my own seminary for the last seven years. I’ve led small groups and taught others to lead them. I’ve been in peer group consultations as a CPE student. I’ve been in individual therapy and couples counseling. Of course, I’ve been around the table with people who know me. I’ve developed and practiced clearness committees in my own life. And I have not had an experience like a readiness consultation.

I’ve gotten feedback before. I’ve been in spiritual direction and been supervised during clinical pastoral education, which are the closest experiences to a readiness consultation. But the purposes of those moments are distinct.

Spiritual direction is a monthly time where my director listens to me, hears me, and helps me hear me as we listen for the “grace that I need.” I’ve gone to direction for seven years and it’s a jewel in my spiritual life. I wouldn’t be in pastoral ministry if I wasn’t in direction.

In my experience, clinical supervision is based upon the agenda that I bring and for the purpose of my growth, learning, and strength as a minister to people. I have supervision weekly, and it’s based upon my needs for my work. It’s a gift because the feedback, the Q&A is directly applicable for what I’m doing, thinking, and processing.

My readiness consultation was a compressed combination of both those types of experiences. Readiness was this huge collection and assembling of myself in order to present myself to chaplain and supervisors in order for them to help me prepare for what’s next.

Since every consultation is unique, my sense is that their questions for me were their questions for me. These meetings are tailored to what materials are sent and to the questions the presenter raised when thinking through the materials. So it was an individualized time of conversation. I led it based upon where I needed things to go.

Even though we only got through 4-5 questions in the hour and a half time, the words spoken went deep. It wouldn’t help for me to post them because you didn’t read my materials or the presenter’s report. Still, they were well-written, reflective comments and questions which had me thinking about me, about others, and about the ministry of supervision.

I will be reflecting on that consultation for a couple weeks. Really. But here are a few immediate takeaways that I expand to you even if you’re not in CPE:

Having assembled myself in written form, I’m only clearer about my work as a pastoral leader in multiple contexts. I serve the church and I serve the hospital, and I have a greater sense of why.
Writing is an indispensable leadership act. Leaders should be asked to, and able to, articulate critical things about themselves such as a brief history of her life, a theology of ministry, and a statement about his motivations.
No matter how much you prepare, being aware of (and being able to tell) your stories will always connect you to another person. Stories are human tools, and the more we share them, the more human we become.
Experiencing something like a readiness consultation is important for pastoral leaders, be it in a clergy group, a therapy support group, a circle of trust, a gathering of church elders or trusted friends. We need people–whenever we serve–to raise quality questions about us, about our plans, about our readiness.
Driving to a meeting a few hours away provides needed space to prepare beforehand and to reflect after upon words graciously spoken. Most of my time in the car is productive or destination-based and doesn’t leave room to think, and traveling to Wisconsin was contemplative space.
Process is more important than content. Attending to what’s happening in us is more interesting than the obvious stuff.
Talking to people is a gift. Being heard and being seen are gifts too, and I’m more thankful for spiritual direction, for quality supervision, and for slow, considered words when they’re spoken.

October 3, 2015 by Michael

3 Things Worth Doing in Groups

Thanks Skitter Photo

My primary role at New Community is to lead the small groups ministry. I do other things like preach and provide pastoral care and leadership when people need to meet with a pastor. But the biggest chunk on my job description, the thing I’m supposed to spend myself doing, is groups. I serve with a dozen leaders and a half dozen coaches in order to provide these smaller environments where people meet, talk about “things that matter,” and are challenged to serve.

I led a group this summer. I’ll lead a couple this fall. Every now and then I get to visit a group. I went to one last week, joking that the only times I actually visit church small groups is when something’s wrong. The comment got a chuckle, broke the ice in the room, and we kept going to talk about some significant things.

Their leader had decided to the leave the church. The group had been having extreme conflict in the last couple weeks. There was an overarching question about next steps for the group. It was a full conversation. And we did three things that I think any group should do, especially a church group. Whether a “small group” or a ministry group, here are the three necessary actions we did that I want to offer people in group life or group ministry with others:

We thanked the leader. Leaders need to be thanked. They need other things too, but gratitude is essential. Whenever you think to express love and support for the people leading, do it. It won’t go to their heads. In fact, they’ll probably underrate and need to be challenged to actually hear it. But we thanked the group leader, and I invited them to be as specific as possible. It was a meaningful moment that should be as natural as anything else. I need to work on this more in my life. I thank every person I meet with–trying to name one or two things I really took in during the meeting–but I still need to devise a strategy for getting our church’s group members to regularly and normally say thanks to those who lead.
We talked about the recent conflicts. This group had been through a hellish set of conversations over the last two weeks, which was my original reason for being invited. They needed me to help them do what they couldn’t alone. I loved that the leader asked me to come because it honored the fact that we work together in ministry; that we all have roles to play. My role was to instigate, facilitate, and contain real, raw words. I was there to help them be fearless in the face of conflict, which is an inherent part of reconciliation. We spoke honestly and even though they were afraid they only spoke up because I was there, I was able to underline how doing it once meant the ability to do the same again, whether or not a pastor was present.
We discussed the future. Groups end. I thought that group would, and I told them so. But I was open and surprised that our pastoral staff was able to envision a different future. I brought both possibilities to the group so they would prayerfully consider them. We should be freed to assume no particular ends in church life. It’s not a failure to end things; it may be a clear mark of growth. It may exhibit courage to close down. But we have to talk ourselves to our futures. We have to pursue the unknown just as faithfully as we pursue what’s common. Being open to whatever comes is the meaning of life by faith. I’m a strategist, but I’m a Christian. The former grates at the latter. So I have to choose to be as Christian as possible, which means walking into mystery as much as possible. That’s our future. We may as well discuss it.

October 1, 2015 by Michael

Prayers for Julia

Join me in praying for Julia who’s taking boards tomorrow:

Thanks to Fressonneveld

Almighty God, you created Julia, which is another way of saying that you are creative and that you made not only Julia but every other person. What an amazing, remarkable thought. You made and you know us. Your memory about us is perfect. Knowing every hair on our heads as scripture says, you made us to be wondrous and wonderful.

As Julia studies for her boards, visit her with the same creativity, the same memory, the same particular genius with which you visited barren grounds and mud puddles in order make humankind in your image and likeness. Grant her what patience she needs for herself as she studies. Quicken her memory, build her capacity, stretch her confidence as she revisits old lessons, forgotten formulae, notes from class, annotations from articles, and all those books with their highlights and lines.

As Julia sits to take her test, sit with her and next to her and in her, anchoring her in ability to succeed and accomplish for glorious ends. Grant her clarity. Be good to her as she works, especially if there are things on the test she’s unprepared for. Place grace in that future. Help her to focus. Help her to remember. Help her to make things up in the same creative and spontaneous way you must have when you fashioned the seen and unseen.

When Julia finishes her exam, give her the clear ending inside that makes peace possible. Help her to celebrate the good work she’s done. Give her the gifts of rest and renewal and recreation. Bless her husband, Dean, with what he needs to take very good care of her. Make their time together nurturing, together and with their children. Help Julia surrender the results on the boards and in every other future moment into your loving hands.

I ask for these things; we ask for these things, in the name of the One who danced through creation with you and who redeems the same, Amen.

September 25, 2015 by Michael

“…who live by faith.”

Thanks to Rowan Heuvel

We have imaginations, intuitions, and moments of awakening that disturb us into awareness of dimensions of circumambient reality that we can only name, on our own, as “mystery.” And yet our feet mire in the clay of everyday toil–getting and giving, spending and being spent–in the struggle for survival and meaning. In the midst of contingency, suckled on uncertainty, we spend our blessed and threatened years becoming selves through relationships of trust and loyalty with others like us–persons and communities. We attach to one another in love; we struggle with one another in fidelity and infidelity. We share our visions of ultimate destiny and calling, our projections in hope, our moments of revelation in awe, and our fear in numbness or protest. We are language-related, symbol-borne, and story-sustained creatures. We do not live long or well without meaning.

That is to say, we are creatures who live by faith. We live by forming and being formed in images and dispositions toward the ultimate conditions of our existence.

From James W. Fowler’s Becoming Adult, Becoming Christian, pg 39.

September 2, 2015 by Michael

Ministry in the Shadow of Violence

Me and my friend David Swanson talked together as part of an interview with our denomination’s communications department. I had originally written a piece and submitted it, and that piece turned into an occasion to talk with a friend and brother about people we deeply care for and issues we’re drawn to address.

Read the post here at Covenant Companion.

Photo Thanks to Esther Kang

Michael Washington

Reflections on the Spiritual Life